Being Alive New York Performances

“Being Alive,” written by Stephen Sondheim for *Company*, arrives as the show’s late turning point, when its central figure stops treating solitude as a philosophy and admits the risks of attachment. The song is closely tied to New York’s theater history: *Company* premiered on Broadway in 1970, and this number has since entered the city’s shared repertoire of modern musical writing. At David Geffen Hall, it is heard in a classical concert frame with the New York Philharmonic, conductor Anthony Parnther, and vocalist Cécile McLorin Salvant. Its plainspoken structure makes its emotional argument hard to evade.